Contra Costa nails Hammer Island residents

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A tiny Delta island called Hammer Island is intersected by three counties --Contra Costa, Alameda, and San Joaquin. Contra Costa planning department has sent letters out saying they plan on demolishing six homes in Contra Costa. Photographed on Friday, Jan. 2, 2008 in Byron Calif. (Dan Rosenstrauch/Staff)

Some of the houses at the Rivers End Marina off Lindermann Road in Byron Calif. Some of these homes near Hammer Island are illegally built but Alameda County is taking a different approach and working with homeowners to get them up to code.(Dan Rosenstrauch/Staff)

Nancy Vogee's father, Ernie Petter, on the deck of the house on Hammer Island. (Family photo)

From their front door, Jack and Nancy Vogee could cast a fishing line and catch dinner from the Delta.

Sure, the fishing thinned after the state built a pumping station nearby, but ample striped bass and catfish remain in the rustic Delta area. This was where they expected to live in retirement, so they dumped their life savings into a sprawling property on Hammer Island, a tiny Delta enclave near Byron.

They lived their bucolic dream for a few decades until it came crashing down in a bureaucratic and health nightmare. Now, their house — and their retirement savings — could be bulldozed.

Hammer Island — with 17 home-owners — is a crossroads: Contra Costa, Alameda and San Joaquin counties intersect smack-dab on the small island, giving it three governments, among which Contra Costa carries the wrecking ball.

Hammer Island is the county’s final target in a decade-long mission to wipe out illegally built homes in the Delta.

Inspectors have swept across waterways abating most of the illegally built structures. Contra Costa has taken a strict approach, saying it must remain consistent on all islands, citing permit, zoning, health and safety, and sanitation issues.

The Vogees say Hammer Island is different from the other Delta islands because its homes were built long before permit or zoning regulations were instituted. Plus, the residents have PG&E service and pay property

taxes.

Although a shattered dream cast a shadow on the Vogees, their neighbors on the island’s Alameda County slice have not been bothered. In fact, Alameda County is helping legitimize about 70 houses just south of Hammer Island. Those building inspectors may work with Hammer Island residents next.

Contra Costa’s final Delta island battle may be its most complicated.

Cabin 15

For years, the Vogees rented Hammer Island’s Cabin 15, traveling from their San Bruno home.

“I always cried when we had to go home because I loved it so much,” said Nancy Vogee, who is 75.

In 1981, the couple bought the small cabin for $30,000. Over time, they transformed it into their dream compound. They barged in a hot tub, spruced up and enlarged a nearly 1,300-square-foot main cabin and guesthouse and spent $25,000 to pile-drive steel sheeting into the shoreline to prevent erosion.

The couple estimated they sank about $110,000 into the property.

“It was really quite heavenly,” Vogee said.

When not entertaining family and friends, the pair would spend days on their boat drifting in the Delta. On Thanksgivings, they feasted on a friend’s yacht.

Everything changed in 2004, when Jack Vogee had a heart attack on the island and his wife barely got him to a hospital in time. Then he was diagnosed with lung cancer and his poor health suddenly made their paradise a medical liability. The couple reluctantly moved in with their son in Colorado.

“It’s something I miss. Thank God I have the Rocky Mountains here,” Nancy Vogee said. “I can’t dwell on it or I’ll sit and cry all the time.”

Shortly after moving, the couple sold their property for $225,000 to a couple who later divorced and stopped making payments. In a move they later regretted, the Vogees agreed to act as the bank in the transaction and lend the couple the money. After the monthly payments stopped, the Vogees took the couple to court to get back their house. By the time they succeeded, the housing market tanked and they could not sell it.

Disappointment became despair when they were notified in October that Contra Costa County building inspectors planned to level it.

Final domino

Contra Costa’s island hunt began as a dispute over an electricity bill. When county inspectors arrived at Salisbury Island to investigate a claim that PG&E overcharged a resident, they found two legitimate power lines and a dangerous maze of wiring illegally connecting the other inhabitants. On their boat ride to inspect it, they motored by Golden Isle and its makeshift water-ski club structures.

“The dominoes kept falling after that,” said Mary Nejedly Piepho, a county supervisor from Discovery Bay. “The county can’t simply turn its back.”

The county has abated almost 100 houses around the Delta and nearly as many docks, said Thom Huggett, interim building inspection director.

No Hammer Island homeowners have permits and the island is zoned for agriculture, Huggett said.

The Vogees say the homes were built in the 1930s, decades before other abated Delta island homes and before permit regulations existed.

“We’re hoping and praying because of that our island will be treated differently,” Nancy Vogee said.

“If those houses built in the ’30s had been maintained, there would have had to be upgrades and they should’ve pulled permits at that time,” Huggett countered.

The Vogees acknowledge working without permits.

“Everybody is so used to doing it, so we did it as well,” Nancy Vogee said. “We’re glad to pay our permits now.”

The county also worries about health and safety issues, such as flooding, fires and sanitation. Some abated island houses had a pit underneath for waste, Huggett said. The Vogees and their neighbors have septic tanks, but the county worries about wastewater leaching into the Delta.

“The Delta feeds two-thirds of the state’s water supply,” said Piepho, who represents the Contra Costa portion of Hammer Island. “(The islands) are kind of tucked away, but they are dead center for the water supply to the state.”

Contra Costa inspectors began sending letters to island residents in September, Huggett said. Inspectors this month, accompanied by Piepho staff members, will visit the island to assess the problem.

Other side of the island

Less than a mile south of Hammer Island lies a spit of land with Delta access and 70 or so structures, from shacks to expensive homes. Like the Hammer Island homes, they have zoning, permit and sanitation issues, but Alameda County has taken a different tack.

“We’re certainly not taking the bulldozer approach. … The reason is, some of these structures were probably legal at some point,” said Albert Lopez, Alameda County planning director.

Most of the Lindemann Road area homes were built in the 1960s, three decades after Hammer Island residences.

The Lindemann neighborhood started as leased portions of fishing land. Anglers built piers, then shacks to stay out of the rain.

“The shacks became bigger and then some of the shacks became houses,” said Chris Gray, chief of staff for Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty.

Many of the worst structures have no plumbing and waste goes directly into the Delta, he said. Those structures will most likely be razed, he said. Others are closer to legitimate and some homeowners bought homes they thought were legal, he said.

“It’s more complicated than ‘It was built illegally and they have no right to build there,'”‰” Gray said.

Alameda County shortly will send letters to Lindemann Road homeowners and do a property-by-property analysis. The landowner must provide potable water and sanitation to tenants without harming the Delta, Lopez said.

“If you would bring the property up to code and meet all the environmental issues “… you should be able to make an argument that they can remain there,” Lopez said.

“The process could in theory transfer” to Hammer Island’s 11 Alameda County homeowners, he said. No one lives on the San Joaquin County portion of the island. Island residents’ arguments that their houses predate many county requirements could have merit, Lopez said.

“If they were built that long ago that there was no zoning or requirement for a permit, one could make the argument they have vested rights and should be grandfathered in,” he said, stressing that he did not know specifics there.

Piepho’s office and some residents have suggested Alameda County could incorporate the Contra Costa portion. Contra Costa is not interested.

“We’ll work with the property owners as much as we can to have a responsible outcome,” Piepho said.

“I understand the personal aspect of it, with putting your whole life savings into it,” she said. “But there’s a (permitting) process that everyone else is required to do.”

Not-so golden years

Hammer Island’s six Contra Costa homeowners have few options. The Vogees cannot sell their house because the county froze all Hammer Island ownership changes pending the abatements.

“Imagine working 35 years, having a nest egg all planned out and then something all out of your control … yanks it out from underneath you,” said Jack Dillon, the Vogee’s 44-year-old son. Dillon put up his mother and stepfather in the carriage house behind his Colorado home.

Jack Vogee, 76 and in poor health, runs the shuttle service for Dillon’s automotive repair shop. Nancy Vogee helps at the shop to supplement their meager Social Security checks. The couple has mounting credit card debt, and say they could be forced into bankruptcy.

Matthias Gafni is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group. He has reported and edited for Bay Area newspapers since he graduated from UC Davis, covering courts, crime, environment, science, child abuse, education, county and city government, and corruption. A Bay Area native, he loves his Warriors, Giants and 49ers. Send tips to 925-952-5026 or mgafni@bayareanewsgroup.com. Send him an encrypted text on Signal at 408-921-8719.